


Letting Go

by pentacs14



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hogwarts Eighth Year, after the war, bit of OOC nonsense, bonding in the library, letting go of the past, short bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentacs14/pseuds/pentacs14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's just trying to move on and put the past behind them. Sometimes all it takes is a good old-fashioned apology and the help of a bushy-haired meddler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimers: Do not own, am not making any profit, etc.
> 
> Just a bit of lighthearted nonsense. Not really trying to keep to the tone of the books or anything.

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Hermione exclaimed into the hush of the library.

Several students at nearby tables, mostly Ravenclaws with a smattering of upperclassmen from other houses, either shushed her or threw her dirty looks but she ignored them with supreme indifference.

"We won't be getting much accomplished like this," she announced as she stood.

"Time for dinner?" Ron asked hopefully, though it was hardly afternoon. He had hit another growth spurt and had become quite adept at spells designed to lengthen his trouser legs and shirt sleeves.

Ginny and the rest of his brothers never missed an opportunity to crack wise about his growing skill with cloth-mending spells.

Hermione ignored him as well, with the ease of long practice, and hauled a nonplussed Harry to his feet.

"You've spent the entire time we were supposed to be revising DADA staring," she said. "I know the great Harry Potter could probably manage to get a grade below Troll and still be accepted into the Auror program but I thought you told Kingsley that you wanted to get in under your own merit."

"Wait, Harry's got his eye on somebody? Who?" Ron demanded. "Why didn't you say, mate? I coulda used something like that to put Ginny off last time she cornered me to ask if you had moved on."

"Oh, honestly, Ron," Hermione said with an exasperated roll of her eyes. "I'm not talking about a girl. I'm talking about him. And I think it's high time we did something about this before it turns into as big of an obsession as it was sixth year."

With that she marched down the aisle hauling Harry along with her, a baffled Ron trailing in their wake like a gosling, towards an oblivious Draco Malfoy busily scratching away at his parchment on the other side of the library.

The quill paused when they arrived but it took a second before Draco glanced up, his expression blank, his face smooth despite their sudden appearance.

"What do you want, Granger?" he asked after a moment's silent scrutiny. It was a statement that not long ago would have held enough venom to poison the majority of Gryffindor house. Now it just sounded world-weary and worn.

"We would like to bury the hatchet," she said briskly. Draco looked suspicious and Ron bewildered. "Sorry, muggle expression. It means letting bygones be bygones. Stowing the wand, if you will."

"We would?" Ron asked blankly. "Why?"

Draco's gaze shifted to him and he shuffled in embarrassment.

"We would," Hermione stated firmly. "All of us," she added with a pointed look.

Draco finally allowed his gaze to land on Harry who appeared to be quite thoroughly engrossed in the rules posted above Madame Pince's desk.

He had never noticed before that improperly shelving a book could result in not only the docking of house points but also bread and water rations for a week. Certainly that was a little excessive and should be brought before the board of governors some time soon? 

"Harry!" Hermione hissed as she elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Harry spun around to scowl at her but she only glowered right back.

With less than good grace Harry turned to Draco and stuck his hand out.

"Yeah, alright," he mumbled. "I'm sorry your family was in danger and your life sucked. You were still a colossal git. See ya around."

"You're acting like a child," Hermione hissed.

"And you're acting like a shrew!" Harry hissed back.

"I am trying to help," she replied hotly.

"Well, if this is your version of help then you can stuff it."

Hermione opened her mouth, her eyes flaming, before she was abruptly cut off.

"If it will get you lot out of here faster then I accept," Draco drawled without bothering to take Harry's forgotten hand.

"What?" Harry asked dumbfounded.

"I'm sorry," Draco said with just a touch of his old asperity. "Did I interrupt your little lover's spat?"

"Hey!" Ron objected. "Don't say that. She's mine."

The deep breath Hermione had drawn in preparation of a full-scale scolding of Harry's appalling behavior turned into a scathing diatribe leveled at Ron and his sexist neanderthal views of women as property.

Harry gave a mild snort of amusement that he was surprised to hear echoed. His eyes met Draco's and they both let the faint grins they had been unable to suppress fade.

"I am sorry for the shit you've been getting," Harry said. "Part of me says you deserve it for being such an ass all the time but another part of me realizes that you aren't any different than the rest of us. Just a kid forced to deal with the fucked up choices of the adults around you. Forced into the same war but the wrong side. I'd probably be an ass too if I had your dad breathing down my neck."

Draco allowed a sneer to grace his features but it, like his comments earlier, lacked the bite they once would have held. "If I cared one whit for your half-assed forgiveness I'm sure that would mean the world to me," he said, sounding so much like his late godfather that Harry blinked.

"Merlin, don't make this easy or anything," Harry muttered.

"Easy?" Draco echoed in astonishment. "Make what easy? I have no idea what you are trying to achieve here besides interrupting my studies and insulting me."

"What I'm trying to do is apologize," Harry told him. Now that Hermione had thrown him into this situation he might as well make the best of it. "I'm still letting the past color my actions. Things have changed and I'm having a hard time accepting that so I haven't been very civil to you and Hermione keeps calling me on it. And she's right, I'm acting like we're back in first year again and you don't deserve that."

"I don't deserve that," Draco marveled. "Do you not recall that I spent the entirety of our childhood trying to bring about your utter humiliation and the majority of our adolescence plotting the death of your mentor? My family imprisoned and tortured your friends, my aunt killed your godfather, I personally allowed the frothing sycophants of a psychopathic madman into our school walls, forced my own godfather to kill the one man who might have been strong enough to protect the school, and then caused my godfather to abandon you, the wizarding world's only hope of survival, in order to save my own worthless hide."

Harry flinched at this bald-faced litany of Draco's actions during the war. "You weren't all bad," Harry muttered dubiously. "You didn't sell us out to your family at the manor and I wouldn't have defeated Voldemort without your wand."

"Yes," Draco said in a hard little voice, staring fixedly at a shelf of books. "A moment of cowardly indecision when faced with sending people I grew up with into the hands of an insane megalomaniac who daily threatened my family with unspeakable torture and the unwitting loan of a wand. Hardly shining acts of atonement."

"You and your mother have done a lot to make up for your role in the war since then," Harry offered softly. "Not least of which was to help fund the rebuilding of Hogwarts."

"Dumbledore's posthumous pardon may have had enough sway to force the public to feel pity for my mother and I but the Wizengamot was not going to let us off scot-free. We toss money at every war orphan and public funding project the Wizengamot brings to our attention," Draco said dismissively. "We've simply changed one overbearing taskmaster for another."

"Your mother didn't have to help me out in the forest," Harry continued, not sure why he was still arguing the point but unable to concede defeat. "And you didn't have to sneak food down to Luna and Ollivander while they were imprisoned in your basement. She said you would sit on the stairs just out of sight for hours at a time listening to her tell Ollivander stories to take his mind off the pain."

"It was only a bit of food, things no one would miss," Draco said softly. "I didn't realize they knew it was me. I wondered why they never brought charges against us."

Harry shrugged. "It's hard to say what and how Luna knows the things she does. She'll probably tell you a Nargle told her."

"Regardless," Draco said with a shake of his head. "Smuggling a few pieces of cake hardly constitutes the actions of a war hero."

"I never said war hero," Harry replied with dark mirth. "You really don't want to make this easy on me, do you? I was just implying that you were the singular most reluctant Deatheater I have ever seen."

"And how would you know that?" Draco demanded.

Harry tapped his scar. "Visions, remember?" Draco stared at the faded but still visible scar on Harry's forehead, his hand creeping unconsciously to rub at his left arm where his own mark from the Dark Lord was hidden from view.

"Anyway, you're not the colossal git you used to be," Harry rushed on with his usual lack of forethought. "I mean, you've been a surprisingly decent bloke since everything settled down and it can't be easy having your father in Azkaban and everyone here treating you like you don't belong. They need to back off and let you be. You deserve a little breathing room." Harry felt a little funny saying all that when he had been one of those people mere minutes before but he was surprised to find that he actually meant it. And wouldn't Hermione just love that? Another reason to say 'I told you so.'

"How very mature of you, Potter," Draco said, leaning back in his chair. His voice still sounded petulant but there was a vague undertone of amusement. "And I suppose I ought to reciprocate by apologizing for any colossal gitty-ness not directly influenced by the war?"

"You could try," Harry said with the ghost of a smile. "But then I would be forced to do the same and I'm not sure we have that much time."

"Tit for tat?" Draco offered with a quirk of his lips. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Harry's guffaw took his companions by surprise. Both Ron and Hermione turned to stare at the pair of them with open mouths.

"So, yeah," Harry said breezily. "Sorry and all that."

"Same here," Draco said with cool dignity. He stuck out a thin pale hand and Harry took it in his rough calloused one. They stared at each other for a long moment, neither quite sure what was going through the others head, until a strangled noise broke the moment.

They broke apart and Harry looked over at a gobsmacked Ron and a thoroughly delighted Hermione.

"Finally," she said happily. Nope, he was never going to hear the end of this one.

"What? Who? What?" Ron demanded, completely baffled.

"Oh, honestly, Ron," she exclaimed. "Do keep up."

Harry gave an indifferent shrug. "Bygones and all that," he offered in way of explanation.

Ron turned to stare at Draco still flabbergasted. "He... but... Harry!" was all he managed to get out. Then he got a look at Hermione's resolute face. "Ah, bloody hell," he muttered.

"Water under the bridge," Draco told him magnanimously, despite the fact that the redhead looked like he would prefer swallowing raw bubotuber puss then make amends with Malfoy. "Now if you don't mind I have some more revising to do."

"So do we," Hermione seconded as she dragged a protesting Ron back towards their table. "And lots of it."

Harry lingered a few seconds until Draco looked back up.

"Yes?" he asked. It was almost painfully obvious that he was trying to suppress some caustic remark like 'Forget how to walk now that the brains of the operation have left.'

The war may have matured him some but underneath it all he was still the same old sarcastic git. Oh, well, in for a knut, in for a galleon.

"Look," Harry said. "So I was wondering if maybe you might want to, uh... play a game of Seeker's All out on the pitch sometime. For old-times' sake. Or something."

Draco stared at the rapidly coloring boy in front of him for several long moments before he finally allowed his teeth to show in a sharp grin.

"Best two out of three. Winner gets bragging rights for eternity."

Harry's eyes gleamed. "You're on."


End file.
